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OT: Avengers: Endgame and The Concept of the Movie Star

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Its been awhile since I saw Avengers: Endgame. A few weeks. But I've been thinking about this aspect of it.

When they reach the end of movie, some credits start rolling for all of the actors in it, each one getting a brief clip . It goes on forever. The idea is to capture pretty much every major actor who has appeared in ALL the Marvel movies since "Iron Man"(2008) and yet the irony is, they can't get them all in. The rule seems to be: the credit roll can only include actors/actresses who are IN Endgame.

What this means -- by my off-the cuff observations, is that these stars, at least, aren't in Endgame and aren't in the end credits: Anthony Hopkins(a Best Actor winner; Thor); Jeff Bridges(a Best Actor winner, Iron Man); Tommy Lee Jones(a Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner, Captain America.)

But even missing a few , plenty show up in the Endgame credits. I determined that two of them were actually movie stars: Robert Redford and Michael Douglas.

By this I mean that Redford and Douglas had "free standing" star careers of at least a solid decade at the top(for Redford, from Butch Cassidy to The Electric Horseman; for Michael Douglas; Romancing the Stone through Basic Instinct and beyond). So many of the other movie stars in Endgame are stars only BECAUSE of the Marvel universe: Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, ScarJo(alas, she really hasn't bloomed beyond Marvel), Jeremy Renner(who seems "rather a lucky fellow" to me; take out Marvel and The Hurt Locker and he lacks star quality -- remember that Bourne sequel that tanked?)

There are some Best Actress ladies in Endgame: Gwyneth Paltrow(from Iron Man, and she's had little career beyond Marvel for 10 years); Brie Larsen("newly minted" as Captain Marvel, and will SHE have a career beyond this given her "Room" Oscar?) . There are some Best Supporting Actress ladies in Endgame: the ubiquitous Tilda Swinton, the how-damn-girl-next-door-sexy can she get, Marisa Tomei(my personal movie crush one movie BEFORE My Cousin Vinny -- Oscar with Sylvester Stallone as her pa) -- Swinton's from Dr. Strange and Tomei is the re-booted Sexy Aunt May in Spider-man. (Aunt May was a White-Haired sweetie in previous versions.)

There is the African-American contingent. The Black Panther folks are from a blockbuster; I believe only the leads(Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan) have gotten some starring roles from it, I may be wrong. Angela Basset is a name, certainly. Anthony Mackie as Falcon. Don Cheadle(who replaced Terrence Howard) has been Iron Man's partner for years, and is probably the most reliable name in the Marvel universe.

And of course, there is Samuel L. Jackson, who remains a wonder of sorts: he's in everything, but never quite a full leading man star. He generally supports other people. Still, I'd say he's our Gene Hackman these days -- the Man Who is In Everything. But then Hackman shocked us and retired and its been years he's been gone. We miss him. I expect some day we will miss Samuel L.

These end credits move inexorably to one particular actor...all these other stars lead up to him:

Robert Downey Jr. (RDJ, as I like to call him.)

RDJ certainly had an interesting career. His father, Robert Downey SENIOR, was known to us boomers as the maker of a little-seen, very talked about film called "Putney Swope" from 1969 or so. Senior somehow took on a pot-smoking, countercultural aura that well outstripped his actual work. And he had a son.

Came the 80's, we saw that son -- quite a pretty boy in his youth, but with a comedy face -- on Saturday Night Live and in at least one John Hughes teen movie(Weird Science, I think.)

And then came some years of semi-stardom (on the screen) and tragic drug addiction. And jail time. For awhile there, Robert Downey Jr. was the nation's "cautionary tale" of privilege and drugs. Waking up in a bed in the wrong house(his neighbors.) Partying alone with strippers in Palm Springs on Thanksving(which made it all the lonelier.) The jail time.

But RDJ had something going as he got older: his cutie-pie 80's look took on some lined, mature handsomeness. He started to look like a REAL movie star.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And his line readings were sublime -- fast, stopping on a dime then curling around to speed up and shoot forward again, with little mumbled one-liner asides.

RDJ showed off all of this -- the good looks, the great line readings -- in the movie I think he made right before Iron Man: Zodiac. His co-leads were Jake Gyllenhaal(as a cartoonist-reporter obsessesd with the Zodiac killer) and Mark Ruffalo(as a cop getting ruined by his failed quest to catch the Zodiac Killer), but those two guys always faded away when RDJ took the screen(as a hotshot hippie reporter reduced to paranoia and alcoholism when the Zodiac zeroes in on HIM.)

I expect that RDJ's Zodiac performance was much on the minds of the Marvel moviemakers who cast him as Iron Man (after Tom Cruise turned the role down -- d'oh!) Also, possibly RDJ's crackpot, very brave performance in "Tropic Thunder" as a white method movie star out to play a soul brother black with total commitment. Yes, I'd say that Tropic Thunder and Zodiac were star-making enough for RDJ to parlay them into Iron Man (what was his billionaire's name.)

And then it gets interesting. RDJ early on cut a multi-zillion dollar deal with Marvel in which he committed to play Iron Man in sequels to the original AND as a "guest star" in other Marvel movies. RDJ evidently knew he was signing up for at least a decade's more work in one role. It was like knowing you would be in a hit TV series that would never be cancelled.

RDJ's OTHER work during these years? Well, as I recall, it consisted of two parts of a another franchise(Sherlock Holmes, where he looked handsome and showed off a lightweight boxer's shirtless build for fight scenes) and one, count it, one, stand alone movie : The Judge. With co-stars Robert Duvall, Marisa "sigh" Tomei, and Billy Bob Thornton. I don't remember that being a great movie, but it sure was a great cast.

But RDJ's main purpose in life, his main job, his main salvation if you will, was to play Iron Man

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And since Iron Man started it all, and since RDJ is really a fine , charismatic movie star unto his own right(albeit, now, finally, an AGING one)...Avengers: Endgame, in the end, is really all about Iron Man. The story finally finds an end, for now, with Iron Man's final decisions.

And the end credit sequence basically salutes RDJ for helping to launch the Marvel universe with just the right template: heroism, humor, handsomeness.

I pondered the end of Endgame and gave myself this question:

How many actual movie stars are IN Avengers: Endgame.

I count: RDJ, Samuel L. Jackson(modernly); Robert Redford and Michael Douglas(from the past); Chris Hemsworth(but uh oh, his leads were in Lady Ghostbusters and the recently failed Men In Black sequel) Brie Larsen(if she does more with her career, like J-Law did); the star of Black Panther(same like Brie); and Michelle Pffieffer(I forgot to mention that she is in this, and Pffeiffer has done more to stoke her late career than, say Gwyneth Paltrow did.) And Marisa Tomei(because.)

The rest? No, I don't think they really are movie stars. They don't have much power beyond Marvel. (Hey I forgot Natalie Portman. She was in Thor; she's in Endgame via clips -- I haven't heard much from her lately.)

I think only Redford, Douglas, Samuel L. and RDJ are "proven stars" who went the distance or could go the distance. Redford and Douglas are done, really(and hey, Redford said that Old Man and the Gun was his last movie; is his footage in Avengers from his old Captain America footage?)

Everybody else? Probably not. But its not necessarily their fault. Modern Hollywood isn't set up to properly protect so many actors and actresses and to keep them in A list roles. But Marvel pays them good, so none of them will starve.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

For me, Avengers: Endgame worked the most, and worked the best, as a Cavalcade of Stars. Watching them I thought of their past achievements(The Sting, Wall Street, Zodiac) and ruminated on how little they got to do here.

And hey, I'm STILL forgetting stars. He's not a movie star, but John Slattery -- Roger Sterling on Mad Men -- gets perhaps the most potent and emotional scene in the whole movie(with RDJ.) And Benedict Cumberbach(or whatever) is charismatic, if oddly like a British Dennis Quaid lookalike. And William Hurt(a Best Actor winner who was once a major star) literally gets about 30 seconds on screen(in a sweep of Marvel characters inhabiting one scene.) And Chris Pratt(Guardians of the Galaxy), which means Chrises Evans, Hemsworth and Pratt are all in one movie. No room for Pine.

The movie itself? Well, I give kudos to two ideas that played funny:

The Hulk has trained himself to be Bookish Bruce Banner WHILEthe Hulk. Yes, we get a meek and mild Hulk, with eyeglasses and a bookworm's personality. In one scene where he has to "fake" the Hulk's rage, it is funny to watch the Hulk just go through the motions of half-heartedly crushing cars and throwing them("Yeah, uh...I'm in a rage...oh, whatever...")

Thor spends much of the movie, well there's no other way to put this, as Fat Thor. its the old Bill Murray routine about Hercules("If you don't exercise, muscle turns to fat.") Too many beers, too much junk food, and we just have to live with this vision for almost the entire movie.

Of course, the villainous Thanos killed half the world in the last one, including half of the Avengers, so the new movie is about bringing half the world back. Time travel is involved, always fun.

And...that's about it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I recall Mike Myers as Wayne(on Wayne's World) noting of the Fleetwood Mac "Rumors" album of the 70's: "Its not like we bought it, its like it was issued to us." Endgame is one of those movies that was issued to us. It has made its billions without much of a sense of discovery or import. I think back to how Jaws and The Godfather and The Exorcist took the world's imagination by storm and -- this aint' that. (Hey, Psycho was the same way, there's my on topic reference.)

And of course the funniest thing about Endgame is....that it is not.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

(Hey I forgot Natalie Portman. She was in Thor; she's in Endgame via clips -- I haven't heard much from her lately.)

She hasn't had anything to match Black Swan (2010) - Oscar, $340 million worldwide on a $13 million budget - since. She wasted a lot of time on a star-project she found&produced, Jane Got a Gun. Portman's risky choice, talented but eccentric & anti-commercial art-house director, Lynne Ramsay left the project half way through causing chaos. Budget blew out to $25 million with delays and recasts and it grossed only $3-4 mill. or so.

She was also in two dreadful - I couldn't finish either of them - Malick films, Knight of Cups & Song To Song. Biggest successes: Oscar nom'd for playing Jackie Kennedy in Jackie, which I didn't see & some acclaimed for playing the scientist lead in the Solaris-ish Annihilation on Netflix, which I thought was just OK.

Portman's smart though, and so has killed on SNL a couple of times, especially with her surprisingly great rap-skills. She's also just kind of been on everyone's mind since she was a kid assassin in a very fun, cool, successful worldwide film, Leon- The Professional (1994). She's got a special kind of stardom from that longevity - a 25 year career so far.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hey I forgot Natalie Portman. She was in Thor; she's in Endgame via clips -- I haven't heard much from her lately.)

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She hasn't had anything to match Black Swan (2010) - Oscar, $340 million worldwide on a $13 million budget - since.

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That was her big one, wasn't it? And an example of the "Oscar bait movie" that hits big too(probably because of th sexual angle.)

I'm reminded that we can add Portman to the Endgame cast as ANOTHER Oscar winner -- this film series certainly has attracted a slew of Oscar folk, and that's rather the joke of it. With Brie Larsen especially. She went from unknown , to Oscar winner ("Room") and then on to a King Kong movie and Captain Marvel. Its as if the Oscar is a required credential to make big money in the commix. This was Oscar winner J-Law's trajectory , too -- except she's in TWO franchises (The Hunger Games; X-Men) now both about done.

Speaking of Oscar winners, I saw Tom Hanks a few years back saying he would love to be in a comic book hero movie --- but nobody's asked him. Somehow, I think he got asked, but declined. Its just a hunch.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

She was also in two dreadful - I couldn't finish either of them - Malick films, Knight of Cups & Song To Song. Biggest successes: Oscar nom'd for playing Jackie Kennedy in Jackie, which I didn't see & some acclaimed for playing the scientist lead in the Solaris-ish Annihilation on Netflix, which I thought was just OK.

Portman's smart though, and so has killed on SNL a couple of times, especially with her surprisingly great rap-skills. She's also just kind of been on everyone's mind since she was a kid assassin in a very fun, cool, successful worldwide film, Leon- The Professional (1994).

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I recall a certain "creepy vibe" in reviews of The Professional about how male moviegoers "would have to wait" for Portman to mature enough where she could be sexually coveted on screen. Idea being, that she already had some of that quality even as a kid. Yecch, on the one hand but -- eventually she did mature and became a pretty young adult.

I like her brief bit in the all-star misfire "Mars Attacks"(1996). At the end, Martians have killed off about 75% of the world. Portman is the daughter of President Jack Nicholson and First Lady Glenn Close -- both dead. Now orphaned, Portman looks at the geeky, poor young man who saved the world and says "Hey, you got a girlfriend?" No, he doesn't. Happy ending after world destruction.

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She's got a special kind of stardom from that longevity - a 25 year career so far.

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And I daresay she's young enough to "pull out of the slump" and do something great.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

How many actual movie stars are IN Avengers: Endgame.
Chris Hemsworth(but uh oh, his leads were in Lady Ghostbusters and the recently failed Men In Black sequel)

Hemsworth is *the* movie star to my 12 year old niece (after Thor). She duly went to see him in Men In Black. Twice (rejecting Toy Story 4 in favor of that second viewing!). She loved MIB and him in it.

In general, hanging with my neice a bit this week has reminded me of what a lot of fun being 12 often is as all of this mega-expensive Hollywood product is aimed precisely at pleasing *you*.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hemsworth is *the* movie star to my 12 year old niece (after Thor). She duly went to see him in Men In Black. Twice (rejecting Toy Story 4 in favor of that second viewing!). She loved MIB and him in it.

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I definitely think he's got star quality -- they cast him in these high profile "reboots" because they felt he could lead them(or in the case of Lady Ghostbusters, give a chick flick a male anchor -- like Nicholson in Terms of Endearment.) I don't think he's out yet. And I assume(?) he can maybe still play Thor(nobody seems to think that Endgame is really...endgame.)

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In general, hanging with my neice a bit this week has reminded me of what a lot of fun being 12 often is as all of this mega-expensive Hollywood product is aimed precisely at pleasing *you*.

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On other OT threads, I opine about the centrality of North by Northwest in my movie loving life. Psycho , too -- though it was forbidden to me in 1967, the same year I got to watch NXNW for the first time.

Well, I think that may have been around 12 or so for me, too (maybe higher, maybe lower) and...it occurs to me.

Endgame , is, for some 12 year olds right NOW , gonna be THEIR NXNW decades from now. The passion takes you young and you never really feel quite that way about movies again.

Except sometimes. Batman 1989 brought it back. LA Confidential. A few others. A lot of QT's movies(but not all.) I've always been surprised when a case of "movie love" overtakes me outta nowhere in my later years.

Good for your 12-year old niece, to be dedicated RIGHT NOW.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Good for your 12-year old niece, to be dedicated RIGHT NOW.

She's really caught the movie bug, whereas her 14 year old sister is your paradigmatic millennial who selfconsciously thinks of movies as boring and passe, "her parents' thing". Instagram and Netflix (esp. series like The Good Place, Kim's Convenience, 13 Reasons Why, Dead to Me) are hers.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

RDJ showed off all of this -- the good looks, the great line readings -- in the movie I think he made right before Iron Man: Zodiac. His co-leads were Jake Gyllenhaal(as a cartoonist-reporter obsessesd with the Zodiac killer) and Mark Ruffalo(as a cop getting ruined by his failed quest to catch the Zodiac Killer), but those two guys always faded away when RDJ took the screen

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Gyllenhall just entered the MCU in the latest Spiderman film, playing (so I understand) a false friend to Spiderman, Mysterio. I imagine some recent kid getting around to dialing up Zodiac (it's currently on Netflix where I am) & being struck that the Zodiac Killer was a pretty impressive super-villain since Iron Man, Hulk, and Mysterio working together couldn't catch him (or even figure out who he is)

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Well caught, swanstep -- the MCU now has all three stars of Zodiac in it.

Keep in mind that Mark Ruffalo was the third actor to play the Hulk...after Eric Bana and Edward Norton. Norton was evidently very difficult. Ruffalo projects a certain gentle intelligence -- this is what makes his "mild manner Hulk" such a great character -- its the Hulk as Mark Ruffalo.

Indeed, I'd say of the three Zodiac stars, both RDJ and Ruffalo have some charisma. Jake Gyllenhaal is in everything, and has a great body but...I don't much go for his persona.

I've watched Zodiac at least partially a couple of times on Netflix in the last year. It remains a wonderfully made movie with a horrible sense of impotence at its center: an epic, layered thriller about NOT finding the killer. Its a very frustrating watch. (Though hope springs eternal: a California serial killer and rapist called both The Golden State Killer and the East Area Rapist was caught, as an old man, last year, through DNA.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

By this I mean that Redford and Douglas had "free standing" star careers of at least a solid decade at the top(for Redford, from Butch Cassidy to The Electric Horseman; for Michael Douglas; Romancing the Stone through Basic Instinct and beyond).

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I've been pondering this "quick and dirty" assessment of Redford, and Douglas, and return with a bit more (musing about movie stars is fun, I think.)

I clocked Redford from Butch Cassidy(1969) to The Electric Horseman(1979), a solid decade of stardom marked by a lot of back-to-back work early in the decade and a kind of tapering out after All the President's Men(1976.) All Redford did after that was a big-pay cameo in A Bridge Too Far(1977), nothing in '78, and The Electric Horseman, looking good but older in his moustache , for director pal Sydney Pollack, paired with fellow Aging Superstar Jane Fonda. This was a very "polite" movie -- a superstar confab.

But Redford kept going, kept his stardom, and did surprising things with it.

Consider: in the summer of 1980, Redford gave us a grim prison drama called Brubaker. He played a gorgeous prision warden, and pulled it off: a hit. (Redford gave an interview of some self-confidence that he had captured a hit with a serious movie in summer, and against critical concensus that "stars don't matter.")

Then Redford took four years off and came back in 1984("Redford only makes movies in election years," wrote one critic) to launch the Tri-Star studios with the fantasy-laced baseball fable, "The Natural." This was my favorite movie of 1984 when I first saw it (the same day I saw the re-release of Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much -- I remember that weird "two movies in one day" day). But Ghostbusters has overtaken it through sheer re-watchability and the hilarity of Murray's improv one-liners.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Turns out that Redford wasn't going to wait another four years to do a movie. After 1984's The Natural, he did 1985's "Out of Africa" a Best Picture winner for Redford's old pal Pollack, with Meryl Streep on board to give us a prestige "Way We Were" with Redford(I like WWW better, perhaps because I saw it when I was younger and more romantic.) And then after 1985's Out of Africa, Redford surprised again by working in 1986 -- for "Ghostbusters" director Ivan Reitman in a movie originally set for Bill Murray that looks(cinematography) and sounds(Elmer Bernstein score) LIKE Ghostbusters.

It was called "Legal Eagles," a romantic comedy thriller with strong plot links to Charade and Redford doing a pretty good Cary Grant, between ladies Debra Winger(boyish, smart, flirty) and Darryl Hannah(tall, blonde, sexy...a little dense?) Legal Eagles was good, not great, but Redford pulled off his part well.

Thing was, much as Redford could channel Cary Grant..he was starting to look like Spencer Tracy. Too much time in the sun was wrecking his face. He almost seemed to take pride in how ravaged his face was in "Havana" his first movie of the 90's and for(yet again) his old pal Pollack.

Its been an off and on career for Redford ever since Havana. He made for a charming multi-millionaire villain in "Indecent Proposal," that movie where he offered young marrieds Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore a million bucks to sleep for one night with Demi (such a dilemma for everybody!) He made Spy Game with heir to the Redford throne Brad Pitt, as if to say "welcome"(Brad proved, then at least, to have a more reptilian face than boy next door Redford.) And on into the 00's, the 10's(where he did that one hander "All is Lost") and gracious retirement last year with "The Old Man and the Gun." (So he said. Now he says: maybe.)

Not to mention ANOTHER deadly turn at villainy in Captain America: Winter Soldier.

So Robert Redford's star light burned a long time. Cary Grantish. To a much older age.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Then Redford took four years off

Obviously he was pretty active directing and setting up Sundance... I think his directing projects have mostly been quite watchable, and I'd go so far as to say that I really loved A River Runs Through It (1992) at the time. I've only watched it once since though & really it's mostly forgotten now, but I remember it as kind of a great film for the whole family. Sentimental but not as cloying as similarly middlebrow things like Gump and Shawshank from around that time.

Redford's Sundance activities are the focus (along with Miramax) of the '90s sequel to Easy Riders and Raging Bulls, Down & Dirty Pictures. Redford comes across as a bit of a monster of dithering and self-regard and self-dealing in that book. Not as bad to work with and for as the Weinsteins but still quite destructive.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Then Redford took four years off
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Obviously he was pretty active directing and setting up Sundance...

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That's true. He always had those enterprises going, though he didn't direct a lot of movies.

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I think his directing projects have mostly been quite watchable, and I'd go so far as to say that I really loved A River Runs Through It (1992) at the time. I've only watched it once since though & really it's mostly forgotten now, but I remember it as kind of a great film for the whole family. Sentimental but not as cloying as similarly middlebrow things like Gump and Shawshank from around that time.

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I liked his work, but its hard to make an impact as a director without a personal style. Still, yes, A River Runs Through It was thoughtful and mellow -- rather like Redford's persona on screen.

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Redford's Sundance activities are the focus (along with Miramax) of the '90s sequel to Easy Riders and Raging Bulls, Down & Dirty Pictures. Redford comes across as a bit of a monster of dithering and self-regard and self-dealing in that book. Not as bad to work with and for as the Weinsteins but still quite destructive.

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Yes, I've read that book and other stories and Redford had a real reputation for all of those things you say. On movie sets, he was always late; Paul Newman gave him a framed saying: "Punctuality is the courtesy of kings" ...but Redford ignored it. This dithering led to a lot of his projects dying on the vine. It led one director, Sidney Lumet, to FIRE Redford off a project -- "The Verdict"(1982). The role went to Newman, who was magnificent in it and probably better for it than Redford(but Redford was a bigger star at the time.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I believe that William Goldman called movie stars "mysterious deep sea creatures" who rather leave their humanity behind once fame and fortune hit. On screen, they can be friendly and nice and principled. In real life...they don't need to be any of those. Goldman did say that two exceptions to that "bad movie star" rule in his opinion, were Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood -- straight ahead, regular guys. But I"ve read that Eastwood - who so often directed himself -- could be very autocratic and self-centered.

So that leaves Newman...long gone to us...

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Meanwhile..Warren Beatty.

Evidently, Beatty became so rich from three movies -- Bonnie and Clyde(1967), Shampoo(1975) and Heaven Can Wait(1978) that he pretty much took the 80's off except to make two movies: a good one(Reds) and a bad one(Ishtar.)

This destabilized Beatty's career in the 90's, as did his neurotic penchant for shooting too many takes -- whether directing or as a demanding star. This affected movies like Dick Tracy, Love Affair, and Bulworth. (Evidently, director Barry Levinson kept things under control on Bugsy -- the best of Beatty's nineties films.)

In 2001, Beatty made another Ishtar-like expensive bomb -- Town and Country -- and was gone. Not wanting to work(he turned down Bill in Kill Bill) --but often unable to get hired(studios starting rejecting his personal projects). Til a year or two ago when he brought us a Howard Hughes film that came and went.